little instances.

my name is allen tingley.
i write condensed fiction from your titles.
it seemed easier than stalking you.

THE THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER ANYMORE

        I wrote about writing this three days ago.  Almost three days ago.[1] 

        I didn’t know what I’d write, exactly. I know that it’s going to be just long enough to fill three quarters of the page. I know that I will submit this off into the ether and then walk away from my computer for two weeks. I know that I’ll be up most of the night, not because I’d like to be, but because I know I’m endlessly tired tomorrow.

        I know these things because I wrote about them. Am writing about them right now.

        I can write anything. I can write that on Wednesday I will fall in love. I can write that I’ll get a phone call from a long lost relative. That I’ll overdraw my bank account. That I’ll sky dive.[2]

        The classic line is something along the lines of “I thought I could control it!” You know, buyer’s remorse. Dude invents flesh eating virus and then gets his flesh eaten. But if what you wrote, if what you typed into a text editor somehow foretold the future, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you try?

        I never believed in fate. In a “predestined path.” I thought I was enlightened. That I could see the connections, the causation of things, because I wasn’t blinded by the ignorance of “things happen for a reason.” I’ve always been kind of an asshole.

        Far as I’ve been able to figure out, I wasn’t entirely wrong. Best I know is that there is somehow a give and take between now and tomorrow. Somehow this moment is connected to one in the future. I suppose it’s like a caveman trying to figure out why fire is hot. Regardless, what I say here, in this text editor, somehow connects to the events in the coming days.[3] I don’t know whether I’m changing things in the future by writing in the present or writing in the present what happens in the future. I don’t believe that it’s either. Somehow I’ve managed to tap into the intrinsic paths of things. Of myself. I don’t believe what I am doing is fortune telling. It’s something else. Something way more out there. Somehow I’m course correcting for what comes tomorrow.

        So I’m done. I’m tired of knowing what her name will be or when I’ll drink too much. I want to be surprised by the rain and live without the dread of an incoming sprained ankle. I’m not interested in knowing, not anymore. It’s not a question of knowing anyway. We weren’t built to see this way for a reason. For once I think I’ve beaten it.  I think I’ve got it figured out.  I’m finally writing for my future.

        And I will write nothing else. I will never write again.




[1] It’s actually 71 hours, 46 minutes, 52.4 seconds. I figured that out with clever use of a stopwatch.  

[2] I made all that up, just now. But it will happen. Is bound to happen.

[3] Last week I tried this the first time. I wrote about explaining the problem to my roommate Brian, who then intimated that I was merely holding myself to these things which I write. I was so dedicated to replicating those truths that I was doing the work of “fate” for it. When I reached the end of the story, I edited in a line about slapping him across the face. I thought that that surely wouldn’t happen. A few days later Brian called me an ignorant self-centered prick for thinking I controlled the universe. I slapped him hard across his cheek with the back of my hand.

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